The Box and Packaging
Inside the box, you’ll find the motherboard, a quick installation guide, European regulatory notice, cable stickers, EZ- WiFi antenna, 3 X EZ M.2 ClipS II, EZ M.2 Clip remover, RGB splitter cable, 1 x SATA cable, and EZ front panel cable.
The MSI MAG B850 TOMAHAWK MAX WiFi Motherboard
The board comes in the standard ATX form factor and uses a 8-Layer, server-grade, 2oz thickened Copper PCB. It features a 14+2+1 Duet Rail Power System and 80A SPS for superb stability and reliability.
The motherboard has a black matte finish and includes their Frozr Guard cooling system with heavy plated and large chipset heatsink for more efficient cooling. It also comes with high quality 7W/mK MOSFET thermal pads and extra choke thermal pads, to ensure that all cores are running at high performance.
A Closer Look
On the top left side of the motherboard, you’ll find 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors (which needs to be connected). There’s also a four 4-pin fan headers, one 3-pin ARGB header and a row of Debug LEDs on the top right side of the motherboard.
Expansion slots include 1 x PCIE 3.0 x 1 slot, PCIE 4.0 x4 slot and 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 featuring their EZ PCIe Release mechanism which allows for easy securing or removal of graphics cards.
On the bottom of the motherboard, there’s an additional 4 x 4-pin fan headers for extra cooling, another 3-pin ARGB header, a 4-pin RGB header and 2 more USB 2.0 headers
Interestingly, there’s an extra Supplemental PCIe Power connector (exclusive to MSI), which provides dedicated power for the high-power demands of GPUs used in AI computing and gaming (2nd photo middle left).
The motherboard comes 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots and MSI’s Memory Boost Technology, supporting both XMP and AMD’s EXPO memory modules with speeds of up to DDR5-8400+.
For storage, you get a total of 4 SATA ports, 2 x PCIe Gen5x4 and 2 x PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 slots, featuring their EZ M.2 Shield Frozr II and EZ M.2 Clip II remover.
On the back I/O panel, you’ll find a Flash BIOS button, Clear CMOS, Smart Button, HDMI output, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (Type-C), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (Type-A), 4 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x USB 3.0 port, 5GB LAN, connectors for WiFi 7, Line-out, Mic-in and optical S/PDIF.